Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace…
Campbell Soup Cools as Grocers Cut Stocks – WSJ.com: Saw an article yesterday about Campbell Soup sales falling because retailers, including Wal-Mart were being more efficient in their supply chain and inventory management. Makes sense to me. Tom Schoewe, chief…
As I was catching up on my back issues of FORTUNE, I had a few Lean thoughts as I read. In the June 9 edition, the article “Wal-Mart puts the squeeze on food costs” caught my eye. It says: Wal-Mart…
By Jason Turgeon: Introductions: I’m Jason Turgeon, the newest addition to the Lean Blog team. Mark and I have had an email dialog going for a few months about the intersection of green and lean, and he’s invited me to…
I know many of you won’t have access to this article from the latest Industrial Engineer magazine (from the Institute of Industrial Engineers) but I had to comment on it anyway. The piece, by Richard Shonberger, has the headline “Faltering…
Dell, in Shift, Will Offer PCs at Wal-Mart – New York Times I recently wrote about Dell’s move away from strict adherence to the direct selling model (and Mark Spearman talked about the idea and how Dell shot him down…
Forbes Article on Wal-Mart Here is a decidedly pro-Wal-Mart article (“the fair and balanced Lean Blog”) in a follow up to this post about Wal-Mart’s new employee scheduling practices. Forbes points out that Lowes and Target also use this type…
TL;DR: Matching staffing to customer demand can make sense from a Lean perspective — but when scheduling systems create unpredictable hours and treat workers as variable costs, they undermine respect for people and ultimately harm both employees and customers. Wal-Mart…
WSJ.com – Wal-Mart Sticks With Fast Pace Of Expansion Despite Toll on Sales From today’s Wall St. Journal: Wal-Mart is striving to bolster its returns by buying more goods directly from overseas and paring its inventory costs by billions of…
Fast Company Magazine Article Here’s an interesting article about the company that makes Snapper lawnmowers. They decided that selling their American-made lawnmowers at Wal-Mart was NOT compatible with their company’s strategy or their manufacturing strategy. From the article: If you…
Evolving Excellence: (Superfactory Blog) Thought provoking post from the Superfactory blog. The blogger asks the question “Has Toyota become an “old” benchmark for modern-day excellence? “ My short answer is “no.” Check it out… my comments are there on the…
I’m currently reading a fascinating and eye opening book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman, of the New York Times. Friedman has written numerous books on globalization and the Middle East,…
